As covered in the previous chapter, following its independence, Armenia aimed at following a neutral policy with a focus on improving its neighbourly relations. Nevertheless, due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan, and the joint imposition of trade embargo and border closure on Armenia by Azerbaijan and its major ally Turkey, Armenia’s initial aims proved to be futile. This situation along with the realisation that Armenia’s geopolitical location hindered any prospect of it acting as a neutral state made Armenian policy makers turn back to Russia, which was consolidated with agreements on ‘economic,
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political and military issues’ (Petros, 2003, p. 4). Russian-Armenian relations have been shaped predominantly by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, especially from the stance of Armenians: what Armenia needed was the preservation of the status quo in the conflict to keep the territorial gains intact, whereas Russia, as we have touched upon in the beginning of this chapter, wanted to keep its grasp over the South Caucasus. In this section, the author will lay down the major economic, political, military and social issues that stemmed from the respective needs of Armenia and Russia and that determined the course of bilateral relations between the two states, the findings of which will be utilised in the discussion chapter.
Following the dissolution of the USSR, the closest relation that Russia established in the South Caucasus was that with Armenia which has been manifested with Armenia’s ‘participation in all Russia-led post-Soviet integration projects’ such as ‘the CIS, CSTO, Eurasian Customs Union and EAEU’ (Gafarlı et al., 2016, p. 10). Although this trend initially emerged out of interdependent needs and interests of Russia and Armenia, within time, the bilateral relations between the two states turned into a Russian dominated zero-sum game.
Since the initial need for Russia among Armenians originated from the latter’s security concerns following the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as illustrated above, one of the earliest agreements concluded between the two states was a military agreement. In 1995, Armenia agreed to the establishment of the Russian 102nd military base to be stationed in Gyumri and the 3624th air base stationed in Erebuni (Arynbek, 2016, para 3). The 102nd military base turned out to be highly crucial in terms of meeting Armenia’s security needs because Gyumri is an Armenian town on the Armenian-Turkish border, and because the Turkish Third Field Army is present on the border and its ‘support to Azerbaijani military forces stationed in Nakhichevan’ means Turkey ‘could easily cut Armenia into two’ (Global Security, n.d., para 10). Hence, the Russian military presence in the region serves the security needs of Armenia. This treaty was amended first in 2000 making it possible for Russia to station its military ‘in Armenia for 25 years (Hovhannisyan, 2011, p. 69), and then in 2010, after the 2008 Five-Day War between Georgia and Russia, which extended the stay of the Russian military base until 2044 (Global Security, n.d., para 14). For the neighbours of Armenia, the concerning issue apart from the extension of Russian existence in the region with this treaty revision was that the revision brought about more responsibilities for Moscow (German,
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2012, p. 218). As Valiyev points out, the Russian troops stationed in Gyumri will be responsible for protecting not only the Turkish-Armenian border but also the Armenian- Azerbaijani border (2010, p. 3). Another important feature of this renewed treaty was the provision that required a mutual defence in the event of a military attack on either side (Hovhannisyan, 2011, p. 70). This is a quite crucial development because it implies that if the Azerbaijani government decides to use its military card to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it may easily find itself fighting not just Armenian troops but also the Russian military. This provision consolidated the security needs of Armenia while cementing the power of Russia not only vis-à-vis Armenia itself but also vis-à-vis Azerbaijan because Russia emerged as a military threat once again. However, the consolidated Russian military presence in Armenia made Russia take the Armenian support for and dependency on Russia for granted (Giragosian, 2017), and led to the concerns that Armenia lost its independence becoming a Russian outpost in the South Caucasus (Minassian, 2008).
It should be stated that such arguments are well-grounded. For example, following the outbreak of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh in April 2016, Russia did not provide any military assistance to the Armenian side. This decision of Moscow not to get involved in the military confrontation which stemmed mostly from the fact that it did not know who initiated the conflict first (Korybko, 2017, para 5) brought about doubts in Yerevan pertaining to the reliability of Russia ‘as a close strategic partner’ (Balsyte, 2017, p. 1). In protest of this decision and in defiance of Russia, Armenia announced its plans to proceed with the Association Agreement with the European Union, which, however, was hampered by heavy Russian pressure (Korybko, 2017, para 9). Knowing, especially after the war in Georgia and because of the ‘Turkic’ threat on its two borders, that Moscow cannot be undermined, and it has nowhere to go, Yerevan followed suit and got back on its pro-Russian track, proving Giragosian, Minassian and other analysts/scholars with similar views correct. The outpost claims can easily be extended to the economic realm of Russian-Armenian relations as well. The closure of the Turkish-Armenian and the Armenian-Azerbaijani borders had a severe impact on the economic activities and capacity of the Armenian state. Armenia could not be involved in any ‘regional integration and cooperation projects’ bringing together other members of the South Caucasus community and Turkey, increasing Armenia’s ‘dependency on Russia’ (Gamaghelyan, 2010, p. 41). With Turkey and Azerbaijan out of picture as
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possible economic partners, Armenia had to rely solely on Georgia in the South Caucasus. Given that Georgia was not so well-advanced an economy to meet the needs of Armenia, Russia came to the fore in the economic sphere as well. There are certain aspects of Russian- Armenian economic relations.
One of them is related to security. As the Azerbaijani economy grew exponentially due to its high oil and natural gas reserves and utilised this growth to modernise its military and to increase its hard power vis-à-vis the Armenians, Armenia had to find a way of procuring weapons and armament. Russia provided and keeps providing weapons to Armenia. The positive aspect here is that since Armenia is a member of the CSTO unlike Azerbaijan, Russia has been selling weapons to Armenia at internal prices (Hovhannisyan, 2011, p. 70; Minassian, 2008, p. 11). Suffering from border closures and trade embargo, and the modernisation and consolidation of the Azerbaijani army, Armenia has no option but to buy Russian weapons due to its economic setbacks and the abovementioned pricing.
Russian-Armenian economic relations involve another economic sphere as well. As Balakishi shows, ‘Russia is the biggest main foreign investor in Armenia and controls approximately one quarter of Armenian trade turnover’ (2016, p. 5). Russia invested more than $3 billion in Armenia in 2012 (Minasyan, 2013, p. 1). This is evident especially in the energy sector. There is a full dependency of Armenia on Russian oil and natural gas, and Russia is controlling crucial sectors of the Armenian economy such as ‘the transportation, telecommunications, banking and energy sector’ (Klever, 2013, p. 16). It is known that Russia has been using its energy card as a leverage towards many other countries in its near- abroad to control the economy of such states (Kelkitli, 2008, p. 75). Yet, Armenia is the weakest country in this sense, and Russia knows and utilises this to increase its power in the region. To illustrate, Russia, with its economic and, specifically energy diplomacy, compelled Armenia to hand over the control of many of its most strategic sectors to Russia to compensate for its growing debt to Russia (Kelkitli, 2008, p. 86; Balakishi, 2016, p. 5). Although the expectation of Armenia is, and the norm should be, mutual dependency with Russia in economy, this is not a likely development given the current web of relationship and the status quo.
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The relationship between the West and Armenia also adds to the status quo in Russian- Armenian relations. Due to the border closure between Turkey and Armenia, it is not feasible to incorporate Armenia into Western markets. For example, in the early 1990s, three clothing factories, one of which was the world-famous Benetton, were opened in Yerevan yet they ‘were forced to close soon after, since they were unable to receive necessary supply shipments’ (Goldenberg, 1994, p. 76 as cited in Petros, 2003, p. 11). In a similar vein, when asked if Armenia would ever conclude a free-trade agreement with Europe, Sargsyan told that such an agreement would not be lucrative because the Turkish-Armenian border is still closed (Hiatt, 2015, para 6). Hence, it is no surprise to see that Armenia intensified its economic relations with the Russian Federation which climaxed with the admission of Armenia to the Eurasian Economic Union.
Before heading to analysing Russian-Azerbaijani relations, it should be made clear that the current state of affairs between Russians and Armenians is not likely to change either minimally or drastically. Armenia and Georgia were the only two countries in the South Caucasus that had a Russian military base. Following the Georgian-Russian war in 2008, Russia lost its military bases in Georgia, making Armenia provide Moscow with its only military base in the South Caucasus (Giragosian, 2017, para 5). Should Russian-Armenian relations deteriorate, Russia will no longer be able to maintain its ‘military and political presence in the South Caucasus’ (Minasyan, 2013, p. 4), something Moscow would not be willing to experience. However, the good news for the Russian policy makers is that Armenians do not have any substitute actor for Russia that would meet Armenian needs (Gafarlı et al., 2016, p. 11), and endanger the military presence of Russia in the region.